BROKEN GLASS

In the last two weeks

I have experienced two “accidental deaths”

One the son of close friends; the other

A student at the college.

I’ve gone 62 years never knowing personally

This kind of grief—yet here it is, both are gone.

Details unknown and I dare not speculate for long—

Drug overdose? Drowning? Gunshot wound to the head?

These two young men are in the new demographic for victims—

White, young, male, impulsive on occasion, erratic in behavior—

(Who isn’t when young, pray tell??)

And who take definitive action.

Resourceful, (and desperate) I turn to a young

Black male friend who has fingered these dark places

And has resolved to stay--maintain his life here. With us.

When I asked him what this fatal impulse is about, he

Instead gave an allegory of a dark, damp, enclosed

Space with droplets seeping from the ceiling, walls.

All about to cave in.  What about the urge to

Prevail, to motivate one’s self to find a way, even

That tiny square inch that I give homage to, believe in

With all my heart. Yes! What about that? Isn’t it there?

And if not that

What about the usefulness of cries for help to loved ones--

Family and friends, those strangers among us who will prevail if we can’t.

And what about that ancient light opening even before the

Worlds of words?  Before our contentious selves seemingly like
November stones walked towards us as if to form a team and take umbrage
At the thought of this cardinal sin?  “Uh Uh, no way
 you ain’t about to get away with that….”

My friend? He didn’t say.  He doesn’t know. Perhaps the winter fields will.

As for now, every piece of broken glass in our backyard

Talks and weeps, for the

Reason of not seeing them enough—or ever again.